Hatred by Willard Gaylin (best autobiographies to read TXT) 📕

of conditioned responses that force him into predictable and patterned responses. Skinner thus links Homo sapiens to the lowest living creatures in one seamless continuum. Autonomy is a myth that human beings perpetuate about themselves to narcissistically assert their superiority to lower animals.

Nevertheless, most of us are prepared to accept both: a concept of human freedom, with its element of accountability for action; and a category of the mentally ill, who being sick must not be held fully responsible for their behavior. Simple prudence must be exercised. Both constructs, autonomy and mental illness, need a little pruning at the edges. And if we approach the problem with a clear head, we can allow these contradictory theories of human behavior to coexist. In certain contexts we must assume one, while in other contexts we are obliged to accept the alternative.

Obviously, Colin Ferguson and Rashid Baz are not normal variants of their cultures. They are individuals obsessed with hatred. Their behavior is clearly pathological. They would undeniably be diagnosed as mentally ill by a modern psychiatrist—as would be the murderers of Matthew Shepard, the Oklahoma City bombers, and the men who chained James Byrd, Jr., to the back of a truck, dragging him to his death. All of them would be sent to jail by a jury of their peers. And rightly so. There is sick and then there is “sick.”

7

UNDERSTANDING “SICK” BEHAVIOR

The average physician starts the diagnostic process by taking a history, a testament to the continuing importance of symptoms even in this day of CAT scans and MRIs. A doctor wants to hear the patient’s “complaints.” Is he suffering from headache, tightness in the chest, excessive thirst, or undue fatigue? Is he demonstrating shortness of breath, dizziness, insomnia? The doctor is directed to further investigations by the nature of these symptoms.

The psychiatrist approaches her patient in the same way. She is interested in emotional and mental symptoms. These can be particularly confusing, especially in modern times where the definition of mental illness has been expanded well beyond its original conception and the terminology has become more complicated. “Abnormal,” “sick,” “crazy,” and “insane” are confusing terms, used quite differently in different environments and by different observers. At times the same observer adopts different attitudes toward the same behavior, dependent on the context. As a psychiatrist, I am prepared to accept rude and aggressive behavior from my patients in my office that I would not tolerate from others. Such behavior in the framework of a therapeutic relationship would not even be labeled “rude.” It would be analyzed for its unconscious motives. I am not interested in the “unconscious motives” of the ugly drunk at the bar—nor for that matter, of a friend in my living room—and am not prepared to passively and benignly endure such behavior.

The hatred that is of concern here is by my definition a psychological phenomenon. An essential premise of this book is that hatred is rarely a rational response to a real threat or affront. Acts of hatred represent displacements of an internal conflict onto external sources. They are “symptoms” of a basic emotional disorder. Hatred is obsessive, irrational, self-serving, and ultimately—like any other symptom—self-destructive. We, however, do not grant an act of hatred the same immunity from judgment or punishment that we would when a psychological phenomenon is perceived as a symptom of a disease. We use a different set of criteria in the public political arena. The therapeutic attitude should have little influence there.

The problem of judgment, culpability, and punishment is complicated by the fact that the constituency of terrorists comprises at least three distinct populations. The single, lone-wolf terrorist—what I call the entrepreneurial terrorist—is often a confused and psychotic loner. The institutional terrorists, those who join Al Qaeda, Hamas, and other terror groups, may act in a manner that seems equally insane. but they are not psychotic; they know exactly what they are doing. The members of the professional SS Einsatzgruppen, who volunteered to slaughter the Jews by hand before the Nazis built their gas furnaces, were largely psychopaths or, at the very least, individuals with severe character disorders.27 For purposes of justice as well as our own self-defense, we must handle these groups quite differently. But first, we must attend to the often confusing terminology used to distinguish among them.

Abnormal Behavior

Normal behavior refers to conformity, conforming to “a norm, standard, pattern, level or type.” So what is abnormal behavior for a human being? The question can be answered only by a series of other questions. Am I referring to physiological behavior? Interpersonal behavior? Public or private? In relation to the standards of the species or of the culture? If the latter, what are the cultural norms and can they be considered normal?

The problem of defining behavior relates to the uniqueness of that perverse species, Homo sapiens. It is easier with lower animals. Consider the single-celled animals. Observing these simplest of creatures under a microscope, one is impressed by both their anatomical similarities, one to another—they are all essentially formless blobs—and by the identical quality of their behavior. The amoeba randomly bounces from one place to another, absorbing nutrients and excreting wastes. That’s about it. And it does not matter if the swamp water in which it lives is in Toronto or Timbuktu.

In the case of the amoeba, normal behavior is easy to describe, since there can be little variation from the norm. The simplicity of the amoeba’s functions allows for nothing abnormal short of cellular destruction. These single-celled creatures are the purest individualists—they do not even require another individual to reproduce; they simply split themselves asunder, creating two where there was one. Still, it is hard to treat them as individuals. It is safe to assume no protozoologist names or romanticizes these simple creatures. They have no individuality. In contrast, I have a dear herpetologist colleague with whom I have collaborated in research on “animal rights” who ascribes emotions and personality to his cold and